


stellas longa, vita brevis

by LocketShoru



Series: in kismet marcescence [3]
Category: Saint Seiya, 聖闘士星矢: 冥王神話 | Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas
Genre: Albafica's POV, First Meetings, Fluffy, Love at First Sight, M/M, Minos' POV, also they're 16 or so hence the underage tag, alternating pov, manigoldo and shion are there but for like ten seconds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-23 10:08:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23109709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LocketShoru/pseuds/LocketShoru
Summary: Birds take flight, and roses cleave to the ground. Sometimes, roses dare to ascend to the sky. Sometimes, birds fall too low, and can only regain their grace.
Relationships: Griffon Minos/Pisces Albafica
Series: in kismet marcescence [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1645942
Comments: 6
Kudos: 7





	stellas longa, vita brevis

**Author's Note:**

> The title is hopefully correct Latin. It means "the stars are long, and life is short". I can say for sure there's at least two more parts to this. Wrench fic is next probably.  
> Happy birthday to both Anony and Aphrodite, too!!

The sound of his footsteps deafened the otherwise silent hall as he ran, step after step slamming against the marble tiles. They echoed like an army’s march. An execution chasing him down the steps, Cinderella’s flee from the palace steps. He was down the stairs in an instant, one flight after another, wings at his back and yet still oh-so-useless.

Nothing quite like the execution to keep his head firmly upon his shoulders and his feet on the ground. It wasn’t like he had an alternative, either.

He kept running. Skirting the possibility of death, skirting every guard’s post that he knew of. He knew most of them. Down the steps and off into a side pathway that he wasn’t supposed to know. Nobody was supposed to escape the justice of Ptolomea. Nobody escaped the damnation of Judecca, either, not even him.

The marble tiles turned to cobblestone and then to rough earth, the sound of his footsteps dying away like the execution parade. A few more miles, and heavens he’d never see, he’d be free. Disappear without a glass shoe to say he was ever there. They would forgive him when they found him, or march him proper to the guillotine that seemed so in fashion nowadays.

He ran, wings tucked tightly to keep the wind where it needed to be and not dragging him down like the drowning boy he was. Dark gray cloak over his head and the world blurring as he passed it by. A few more feet…

The pathway turned abruptly back to cold, unforgiving marble, into darkness and the scratches of Spectres before him, seeking refuge, seeking adventure, all the delicious fruits of the garden he would never be allowed into.

He kept running, until the light washed over him with a blinding ferocity, and he was gone.

“Come on, there’s going to be _pears_ , it’s the first harvest of them!” Shion called, beckoning them forward. Albafica followed, pulling his cloak tighter around his shoulders, steps in tandem with Manigoldo, who had tried to grab his hand and drag him forward twice before he would listen to his imperatives not to touch him.

If he did buy some pears, he’d get pear seeds out of it, and grow his own so he wouldn’t have to make these trips anymore, and could stay happily in the Pisces Temple’s garden where the world wouldn’t bother him or worse, put its hands on him. He didn’t need the filth or the curiosity. Either way, he followed Manigoldo and Shion through the cobblestone road to the main part of the marketplace, abandoning his serenity for noise and people and all sorts of things he generally disliked.

It wasn’t even that he hated the people themselves. He just preferred all of this to exist away from him. Where they were safe and it was all right for him to be the monster that protected them. He wasn’t exactly good at being anything else.

Shion found the stall that had the first pears before they did, and he could tell by the sparkle in his mildly-distant cosmos. He allowed Manigoldo to clear the crowds ahead of him, following in his wake in the open space before they shuffled back together. He would have preferred to move slower, with slightly more care taken into his steps, but if he wanted to stay in the open space while it lasted, he had to keep up.

They made it to the stall, Shion already apologizing for their slowness, Manigoldo shuffling through his pockets for the change he might need. Albafica sighed, stepping forward, skirting Manigoldo’s cloak by at least a foot. The more room he had, the better. A corner of his mouth twitched into a small smile as he looked up at the man. His daughter, a small thing of maybe six, seemed to eye him over the flowers.

“Hello, sir,” he greeted, trying to ignore the child’s smile. “How much for a dozen pears?”

He allowed the man to count and take the money directly from his satchel, taking even more care to take only the ones he wanted without touching the rest even for a moment. Manigoldo eyed him as he placed them in his basket, allowing it to disappear again beneath his cloak. He stepped away from the stall, allowing Shion some room, and hoping to sneak away from the crowds as soon as possible. Manigoldo followed him.

“You don’t know how to barter,” he accused, folding his arms. “I’ll show you if you want. Pickpocketing, too.”

Albafica sighed and kept moving, hoping to head back to the bakery in town, which might have his favourite sweet-buns and pie dough. “I don’t recall asking for your help, and I’m fairly certain you’re not allowed to pickpocket.”

Manigoldo kept up, pulling his hands up behind his head. “Yeah, but I don’t really care what Master Sage says. I’m good at it and it gets me more spending money. So why does it matter?”

Albafica rolled his eyes. He noted the villagers out and about today as he skirted around them, faces mostly obscured but unawakened cosmos clear as day and hair colours he recognized, voices a familiar disarray of a pattern. Manigoldo followed him, and he tried to ignore his presence, cosmos awakened and jarring and bright.

“Hey, Shion, keep up!” Manigoldo called, waving behind him. Albafica glanced over his shoulder, noting Manigoldo’s cheery mood and the increasing density of the crowd. Shion was running to keep up, darting around people, cosmos muffled by the sound of indistinct conversations and yelled bartering. Was it just him, or was the marketplace getting louder?

He started to walk faster, lengthening his stride and squaring his shoulders, cosmos twitching into irritation. He could note every danger without ever thinking about it consciously: the small children running through the square carelessly, the few elders out to see the morning sunrise, the tavern up ahead, still mostly quiet except for the hardcore drunkards who no longer cared to be better. Best to chart around that last one.

He stepped into an alleyway, abandoning the idea of the bakery. The crowd was increasing with the day, and the walk from his temple had taken a good hour. The faster he was out of there, the happier he was. He started running, bolting for the fastest escape he could see.

“Hey, Albafica, wait!” Manigoldo called, starting to run after him. He wasn’t very good at outrunning his fellow apprentices. Certainly not one of the fastest of them all. He still didn’t slow down, calming and concealing his cosmos, darting into the darkest shadows where it was less likely Manigoldo could follow him into pathways he knew well as escape routes.

The alleyway opened up into a clearing at the edge of the forest, an old and cracked fountain in the middle that he knew barely worked. If he got into the forest, he would be on home territory, and that would be the most freeing thing of all. 

“Well, well, well,” called a voice from his side. A shadow peeled off of another path and became a young adult, older, bigger, and more bloody-minded than he by far. “Look what pretty little face wandered here. Looks like fun, and i want a taste.”

Behind him stepped two more boys, one smiling in a way that made him want to throw up, the other looking mildly piqued. He stepped back reflexively, which prompted them to step forward, almost leering with their presence.

He extended his cosmos, a rose appearing in his hand. “It’s in your best interest not to come any closer.” He allowed his voice to remain calm. Manigoldo’s cosmos was farther off in the alleyway, a little on the lost side. Shion’s was still in the marketplace. There wasn’t any help coming in, which was simply fantastic and not at all dangerous for everyone involved.

The first of the men stepped forward, his predatory grin fading into a scowl. “Cheer up, ungrateful little bitch. I’m trying to be nice.”

“I don’t think you know what nice is,” said a third voice, not from any of the men. For a moment, he could feel the flare of a powerful, dangerous cosmos. A split second later, he caught the murmur of an incantation, and the barest shimmer in the air, like thin sunbeams through a canopy of leaves. And then the man started to scream.

He spun around on his heel, turning to the presence he could feel hot as fire behind him, and didn’t see a thing but the empty woods. The collapse now behind him was followed by the sudden absence of screaming, and the arrival of footsteps fading into the alleys.

A shadow peeled off of the nearest tree, a weeping willow, and became another boy, just his height, mostly obscured by a dark gray cloak. He pulled down the hood of his cloak and his smile was smug and piercing, the light in his eyes that of joyful murder. He stepped back, unsure, the rose between them. What _was_ this boy? He was sure, for a split second, that this was the closest he’d come to meeting an actual monster, truer than he was to the name.

“Who are you? Why are you here? What possible reasons could you have for your actions?” he demanded, flaring his cosmos. Stars that turned and burned a deeper blue than the drowning seas.

The boy only laughed, raising his hands to where he could see that they were empty. “The sun is still high in the sky, and I know of you,” he answered. “I wouldn’t want to miss the slaughter. But it’s getting awfully late, isn’t it?” His tone was almost imploring, and annoyance crawled up his spine.

He didn’t move, frozen, struck by that infuriating smile. The boy hadn’t stepped any closer to him, kept his hands where they could be seen and not an inch more. “I’m not in the habit of killing people on purpose, if that’s what you were hoping for,” he replied, slowly, lowering the rose. The wind shifted course and he brushed his bangs out of his eyes, ignoring how much of an inconvenience it was.

The boy smiled, his own bangs shifting away enough that he could see more of his face. Even from here, the colour of his eyes pierced into him: a pale violet, the same colour as lavender fields on a misty dawn. He had seen fields like that, before. “I should hope otherwise, then, and see where it gets us both.”

A glint caught his eye, and for a moment, he could see brassy, gold-brown feathers tied into the hair at the base of his neck. He blinked, and the glint was gone. The boy abruptly turned on his heel and was gone, disappearing behind the tree.

He was beautiful. Stars, he was beautiful. He had finally managed to find somewhere to catch his breath, only to taste poison on the wind. Had the Basilisk, or worse, the Lady herself found him? Was he but the animal for slaughter, game-fowl and the oven already warming? No, it was but a poisonous flower, and the only likening he had were the lilies of the valleys, the teardrops of mourning and morning as the mist swept the mountains wide. And there he was, beautiful as stars, beautiful as the hours blue of the morning skies. The rot slipped out of the shadows and displayed grimy, sharpened teeth to their audience of two and the show needed a director. 

He stepped out of the shadows and he bade them pain or farewell, the threads he wove easy to his fingers and the words easier to his lips. Pain and farewell, so it seemed, as the decay pulled back in favour of life and fell away into the forgotten shadows. They would still be there, later. He didn’t care.

Minos had seen the boy of roses, of sea, of the morning sky’s light, and found himself delighted in their interaction, in the grace and poise of the poison so clearly etched into his every drop of blood. How quiet the twelfth temple must be, for even its minnow-fish to not know a Spectre come to bleed! He could almost marvel at the experience, if his mind weren’t still on what lay in the gardens.

He vanished into the forest, into the shadows, and took off running. The daylight was never so beautiful as it was right now, wings spread wide and feet barely grazing the ground with the sudden energy. Could he try again, perhaps, when his life was less the execution? Could the minnow be lured from the marble steps? He might just manage it. If the stars graced him… 

He slowed, wingtips catching the earth and his body suddenly weightless, sailing up into the branches of an oak tree that dreamed of the golden-reign. The tips of his boots touched a branch and his wings curled into him like the bird he was, and he settled down atop of it. The wind at his back and gracing the leaves with a melody.

If the minnow found him again, and they spoke when he was not so off guard… Perhaps he could learn his name, his smile, perhaps to scare each other a little less. He wouldn’t have to tell him anything he did not need to know. He was only a pretty face now, and yet…

And yet, he had turned with a rose in his hand and the storm of anger in his eyes, and Minos wasn’t marching to his execution, no, he was a bird caught in a snare and if he didn’t suffocate now, he would soon enough, and all for those storm-dark eyes and brave-handed disposition. He knew enough of fate to know when it was calling him.

There was left but a single decision: to answer the call, or to flee into the night.


End file.
